Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Karl Kurbel

Description

This course is an introduction to computer programming for beginners. We take the perspective of an application developer. Elementary programming concepts as well as a modern programming language, Visual Basic .NET, are taught. Advanced programming and Visual Basic features are investigated in the second part. This course provides students with the knowledge and the skills required for effective problem solving, and also with a fundamental understanding of programming mechanisms as a precondition for many MBI courses.

The programming language Visual Basic is easy to learn but still a very powerful language, embedded in the Microsoft Office environment. Visual Basic's programming environment, Visual Studio .NET, is one of the most comfortable ones that exist today. Programming in Visual Basic is user oriented, following both the object-oriented and the so-called event-driven programming style. "Event-driven" means that program execution is largely controlled by the user who interacts with the computer through a graphical user interface (GUI). In contrast to earlier versions up to Visual Basic 6, the Visual Basic .NET language has become a full-fledged object-oriented programming language like Java or C++.

Outline

In the first part of the course, a general overview of programming, languages, and Visual Basic is given. Forms and controls for graphical user interfaces, and fundamental programming concepts like objects, variables, data types and control structures, are introduced. Then we study the basic principles of object-oriented programming and how to realize those principles in Visual Basic .NET.

The second part covers more advanced Visual Basic programming. We study common data structures and some computer algorithms like searching and sorting, and we develop programs for those algorithms. A remarkable feature of Visual Basic is that it can be used to enhance MS Office applications like spreadsheets (Excel), databases (Access), and word processing (Word), and to develop WWW sites as well. We will focus on MS Excel and study how Excel's objects and properties can be manipulated through VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), a dialect for programming MS Office applications. Likewise, students will learn how to automate routine tasks in a spreadsheet. Advanced topics like developing Web based applications, Web Forms, and Web Services based on Microsoft's .NET platform are presented in an outlook at the end of the course.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course successfully, students can expect to:

1. possess a basic understanding of the fundamental programming concepts and techniques,
2. understand the principles of object-oriented programming,
3. know how to program with Visual Basic .NET and VBA (Visual Basic for Application),
4. be able to select appropriate programming techniques depending on the application problems,
5. develop solutions that simplify routine tasks when using MS Excel,
6. understand how to access and manipulate objects in MS Excel, and to transfer that understanding to other Office-based applications.

Method of teaching

This is a video-based course (type 1). Weekly lectures are composed of videos in a compact and easily accessible streaming format (WMV). Videos are accompanied by presentation material like Powerpoint slides and online screen recordings. As a student you watch those materials by means of a freeware plug-in (Windows Media Player). You can access the videos at any time and watch them as often as you want.

The course is divided into lectures and exercises. "Lecture" means that the videos and the additional materials to be studied are provided in weekly lessons. Sometimes the lectures are enriched by hands-on examples that you can download and exercise yourself. The time for studying all these materials is approximately two hours per week.

Exercises are given so that students can deepen the subjects covered in the lectures and develop a more thorough understanding. Solving those exercises will take another two or three hours per week. Exercises usually consist of a programming problem that has to be solved by employing the concepts taught in the lecture. The homework is an essential part of the course. Note that submitting solutions is mandatory as the final grading is based on the quality of the solutions submitted.

Communication (e.g. subsequent discussion of the lecture's topics, questions, answers, exercises etc.) between students and instructors is based on electronic media like discussion forum, bulletin board, chat room, and e-mail. Students are always welcome to ask questions and will receive answers as soon as possible.

Requirements

1. To participate in this course you need to know MS Office, handling a PC running under MS Windows, and accessing information in the World Wide Web. Previous computer and programming knowledge is not required.
2. For accessing the course materials you need a Web browser (recommended is an Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher as our websites are optimized for this browser) and Windows Media Player 7.1.
3. You need a running Visual Basic .NET installation on your computer by the time the course starts. We will use the English version of Visual Basic .NET under MS Windows 2000 (English). You may use language-specific versions (e.g. German, Spanish) as well but, obviously, some things will appear differently on your computer.
4. Active participation, hands-on experience and solving the exercises are indispensable!

Credits

7.0 credit points